1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to automatic remote control systems for appliances and, more specifically, to a system for automatically and remotely controlling an appliance based on a positional relation between a mobile terminal and the appliance and other factors.
2. Description of the Background Art
In recent years, there have been increasing expectations for home appliances equipped with a computer and connected to an in-house network, which are so-called “Internet home appliances”. Such Internet home appliances include, for example, refrigerators or microwave ovens capable of displaying a recipe downloaded over the Internet and working accordingly.
Also, with tremendous advances in mobile terminals such as cellular phones and PDAs, such cellular phones having not only a network function but also a camera function, a navigating function, and a function of playing games have been suggested.
Furthermore, as an integrated form of the above Internet home appliances and mobile terminals, suggested is a system where a user uses a mobile terminal for operating a home appliance at home through a network. With this system, the user away from home can remotely operate an air conditioner at home by using a cellular phone, for example.
In the above remote operation, however, the user has to specify an appliance to be controlled, an operation to be carried out thereon, etc. For this purpose, the user has to do burdensome operations such as specifying which appliance to use, when to control the appliance, and which type of control to carry out. Moreover, the user may possibly forget such required operations.